PHILADELPHIA – The American Society of Hematology (ASH) has awarded Nancy Speck, PhD, a professor of Cell and Developmental Biology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the 2015 Henry M. Stratton Medal for Basic Science for her “seminal contributions in the area of hematology research.”
Speck is also associate director of Penn’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and co-leads the Hematologic Malignancies Program at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center and is an investigator at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute.
“I’m very grateful to ASH for bestowing this huge honor on me,” Speck said. “However this recognition also belongs to all of the wonderful students and postdocs I’ve had the privilege to work with during my career.”
“Over the course of her more than 30-year career, Dr. Speck has made key contributions to the understanding of developmental hematopoiesis (the production of blood cells) as well as the translation of these findings into leukemogenesis (the development of leukemia). Her contributions to the field include the identification of proteins Runx1 and CBFβ, mutations of which are frequently found in leukemia. Dr. Speck’s careful biochemical and molecular characterization of these factors – both before and after linking them to leukemia – has enabled rapid progress in the understanding of their role in normal and malignant hematopoiesis,” according to the ASH news release. “Beyond her contributions to basic science, Dr. Speck is well-known for her commitment to the hematology community and to the career development of young investigators.”
Speck earned her PhD in biochemistry from Northwestern University in 1983 and completed postdoctoral research fellowships in retroviral pathogenesis (viruses whose genes are encoded in RNA instead of DNA) and eukaryotic gene regulation at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1989 she started her own laboratory at Dartmouth Medical School, where she was a professor of Biochemistry and held the James J. Carroll Chair of Oncology. She joined Pennsylvania in 2008.
Speck has served on and chaired study sections at the National Institutes of Health and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles.
The Henry M. Stratton Medal is named after the late Henry Maurice Stratton, co-founder of Grune and Stratton, the medical publishing house that first published the ASH’s journal Blood. ASH is the world’s largest professional society concerned with the causes and treatment of blood disorders.
Karl Welte, MD, of Hannover Medical School was also awarded a 2015 Henry M. Stratton Medal for his contributions in the areas of clinical/translational hematology research. Speck and Welte will accept their awards on December 8, 2015 during the 57th the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition in Orlando.
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Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
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